TOW #16 - Pope Article

This article by Daniel Burke, who is the Religion Editor for Cable News Network, was given the grabbing title, "The Pope Said What?!? More Stunners From Francis". The article is actually a series of comments made by Pope Francis in his past few press conferences, along with interpretations and analyses as given by Burke and other quotable religious experts. The intent of the analyses seem be to lessen the blow of the papal quotations, if not negate them completely.
Some of Burke's interpretations attempt to clarify the Pope's points in order to sanitize his message for the general public. Take, for example, the pope's thought that, "Catholic parents shouldn't be 'rabbits'", because, "God gives you methods to be responsible" (para 2). Burke quickly adds that this is probably in reference to natural pregnancy prevention tactics, and should not be considered papal support of artificial birth control.
Other, perhaps more open, response strategies were meant to comment on the lack of complete information in an effort to keep readers from jumping to conclusions without understanding the events completely. In his reply to the possibility of a 'gay lobby' in the Vatican, one comment from Francis was an oracular, "We need to see what we can do" (para 5). Burke jumped on this, declaring that only Francis knows what he means due to silence from the Vatican.
Though simple, Burke's attempts to strip any controversy away from the Pope's comments was for the most part effective. Additionally, the title is apparently designed to attract those who have been shocked by similar earlier comments. Burke may have done this purposely in order to combat the emotional stirs and return the public image of Pope Francis to a healthy medium. Alternatively, it may be just a way to get more people to read his article. In either case both the title and the article were highly effective at their task.

TOW #15 - 2011 Political Cartoon

This political cartoon by seasoned American political critic Jimmy Margulies was published in 2011. Jimmy Margulies is known for his cartoons that poke fun at trends both in the United States government and in the reactions garnered from the American public. His drawings are published, and this one is no exception, in the Hackensack Paper of New Jersey.
In 2011 IBM's Watson, an artificially intelligent natural speech computer capable of parsing abstract prompts and responding in the same vein, competed on the popular trivia show Jeopardy. It won first prize and was rewarded with one million dollars. Despite this impressive technological achievement, the nation was (and still is) facing the sociopolitical issues of social security, medicare, and medicaid.Margulies is attempting to demonstrate what he believes is the frivolity and unimportance of the technological achievement when the nation has yet to conquer the sociopolitical issues. Margulies starkly contrasts the two by depicting Watson struggling to respond to the latter issues despite its former feats.
On either side of Watson are complacent, happy individuals competing against it. If Margulies had wanted their smiles to imply their satisfaction at Watson's inability to think about complex social systems (and therefore lose the trivia game) their faces should have been more excited than relaxed. This cartoon would have had a moral focused more on the technology aspect, saying that humans still have a lot to offer in critical thinking fields. It is more likely however, considered their relaxed faces that Margulies is arguing that the American public is happy and contented with the technology despite more important political issues. Whether or not the figures are effective depends on exactly what their purpose was.
Overall, between the question (as opposed to an expectant answer as is customary on Jeopardy) the distracting understatement of the importance of Watson in technological advancement, and the ambiguous figures that frame the cartoon, the image is ineffective. The rhetorical strategies of juxtaposition and perhaps metaphor are present, but so too are the straw man argument and a lack of clarity.